ORLANDO, Fla., July 13, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Red Giant Entertainment Inc. (OTC:REDG), an innovative Intellectual Property company specializing in high quality characters and content for use in a variety of media and entertainment, made several key announcements at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2015 during its packed panel on the afternoon of Sunday, July 12th.
Hosted by YouTube superstar Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, the Company’s panel presentation was held in front of a standing-room only audience, with an estimated 400 people reportedly turned away at the door due to lack of available seating. The line of fans waiting to get into the panel allegedly wrapped around the building in the hours before the 3-4pm event, with many having waited four hours or more, mirroring the long line of fans waiting to meet Markiplier at the Red Giant’s booth throughout convention.
The first major announcement was the official launch date of the long-awaited, ad-supported GIANT-SIZE line was confirmed by Red Giant CEO Benny Powell as November 4th, 2015, beginning with GIANT-SIZE ACTION #1 and following weekly with GIANT-SIZE FANTASY #1 on November 11th, GIANT-SIZE ADVENTURE #1 on November 18th, and GIANT-SIZE THRILLS #1 on November 25th (the day before Thanksgiving). The line will be available free-with-purchase in the video game section of TOYS “R” US as well as at participating comic book and specialty retailers. Those who miss the stories in print will be able to read them for free on Keenspot.com starting November 16th, updating with a regular schedule from each series. They will also be available as digital downloads in other platforms.
“I will have my own comic… that I will be in!” announced panel host Markiplier to the cheers of the packed crowd. Markiplier will be starring in an all-new Red Giant Entertainment original graphic novel that will be made available for sale in both print and digital formats through mass-market retail locations worldwide, titled Giant-Size Markiplier.
With more than 8.2 million subscribers and 2.6 billion video views on his gaming comedy channel, Markiplier ranks among YouTube’s biggest superstars. This first in a potential series of MARKIPLIER comics will see the character given a mysterious device by an overzealous fan that allows him to transverse dimensions, offering unlimited opportunities for the goofy gamer to get into madcap mischief. Markiplier quickly invades the various worlds of the Giant-Size line of comics, further expanding the brand of each to the millions of Markiplier fans worldwide.
CEO Benny Powell’s most surprising announcement, however, was an initiative for a “native advertising” strategy being employed by the Company for select advertisers. Rather than only placing traditional advertising pages in GIANT-SIZE, advertisers are also commissioning Red Giant to create unique comic book-style content promoting their brands and products. This has not only attracted big advertisers who will take multi-page insertions to the GIANT-SIZE line, but make the comic books themselves a more entertaining reading experience for fans.
The native advertising format is already being utilized successfully by dozens of major media publishers. Business Insider reported in May that advertiser spending on native advertising will reach $7.9 billion this year and grow to an estimated $21 billion in 2018, rising from just $4.7 billion in 2013.
“Like the custom Hostess Fruit Pie comic ads of yore that we older fans look back at so fondly, our ‘native advertising’ pages will offer the same bang for the buck to modern-day advertisers and the same fun to modern-day comic fans,” said Powell. “Further, many of these content partners are using these comics as launching platforms for on-going paid comic book series to be published by Red Giant Entertainment shortly after their debut.”
The panel was a highly successful end to Red Giant’s fifth comic-con, where they also handed out copies of Giant-Size #1 for free to tens of thousands of eager fans. Giant-Size #1 was a free preview book, with introductions by Markiplier to each of the company’s 8 feature titles, and with only 50,000 copies, was a microcosm of what the Giant-Size line itself would be. Totalling 76 pages, including covers, and 23 pages of advertisements to pay for the book itself, the comic was well-received by all. “Once again, our free comics have even topped eBay charts,” noted Powell. “We were surprised to see that unsigned copies were selling for as much as $15. This is something we could never have predicted.”
Unedited raw footage from the panel’s live video stream as well as archived video from all five days of the Company’s Comic-Con livestream is currently available for viewing at the following web address: http://redgiantentertainment.com/live
Red Giant provides news and updates at the following online locations.
http://redgiantentertainment.com and on https://www.facebook.com/RedGiantEntertainment
ABOUT RED GIANT ENTERTAINMENT INC.
Red Giant Entertainment Inc. (OTC:REDG) is a Nevada corporation that specializes in intellectual property (IP) development for multiple media platforms and transmedia propagation. The cornerstone of this development is based around the more than three dozen online and print graphic novel properties in various stages of production as well as the cast of thousands of characters from those series. These properties have a readership that numbers in the millions globally. Some of these properties are actively in development into other media such as movies, video games, television, novels, toys, apparel, applications, etc. through either direct production or licensing agreements.
Forward Looking Statements
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